uberchris

youre going to be flying slow as hell already on the GIGANTIC student canopy they are going to make you fly as a student.

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It doesn't bother me entirely too much as I've been around skydivers since I started jumping 5 years ago. I know some of them are great and helpful to other jumpers, and some are complete dickheads that nobody cares about.

Point being, what if the AFF-I and the TI had this attitude toward some student with 2 jumps under his belt same day. Might make him second guess if he wants to get into the sport. I had my motorcycle parked over in the parking section, was hanging out there waiting for my load, and I could hear the AFF-I talking to a student concerning exit posture. The student was making a small typical new jumper mistake, easily correctable, and the AFF-I was practically screaming at this young guy "Are you going to do that up in the air huh?!! Well are you, tell me now!!!" I never received such treatment as a student jumper back at my home-dz, nor did any other students, and we all got our A stamps right on jump 25.

were dealing with skydiving here, thick skin is an asset............

i almost recently died.

"deat by ADD" my stupid inattentive ass forgot to route my chest strap because i was busy putting on a new tracksuit. that shit would have sent me straight out of my rig and into the ground...........

luckily, my mentors always grained into my head, check check triple check all handles and i caught it in the plane......

lesson learned, ALWAYS triple check your shit

i have a closing pin tattood on each wrist, life sized.........

when asked what they are, ive given every fake answer from fishooks, to electrical contactors (im an electrician), to west african fertility symbols, etc. etc.

its not worth explaining what a closing pin is to a non jumper
=)

i suppose i do see your guys point......

i think what my coach was getting at was that with low expeirence (me), landing with rears could be more dangerous because the stall point occurs much quicker and with less input...........

but i understand where you guys are coming from with being prepared for when the shit hits the fan.

question - i have lost a toggle on a slider down BASE jump and landed uneventfully with a combination of rears and one toggle...........would you do the same with a skydive canopy or would you use just your rears?

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Yea I don't know.

I completely agree with dave and others but personally i believe you should simply jump normally with one parachute you feel comfortable with, you will need at least 100-150 jumps to even start thinking about swooping. Get to know your canopy, get the feeling for when it stalls, how it acts in high winds, low winds, how fast/slow it turns, play with front/rear risers in high alt to learn the differences. Then you move on and learn to land with your rear risers only, and when you have all that, get a coach that will teach you how to plan your swoop approach, which is normally without turns in the beginning. Simply both front risers down to max to gain speed, rear risers to cover, lean a bit forward and use toggles to break when losing alt and speed during the swoop. You will also have to go through training on how to use your legs properly when landing in high (higher) speed. You can injure yourself (or even die) just by crashing during you swoop.

I dont say Im a pro or know any better, but I have my own experience, and I was rather quick in learning than many others who prefer to take it easy and do swoops and alike only after 1000+ jumps. I was downsizing rather quick from 190 to 170 to 150 to 130 to 110 to currently JVX 99 all within 400 jumps! I consider myself lucky to have some of my best friends to be instructors at my home dropzone and helping me out to improve everyday and with every jump. I'm a curious mother-effer and I don't try new things unless I've asked all possible questions to the right people about my next move. So with a bit over 500 jumps im swooping the shh out of my JVX 99.

It def is a very dangerous sport all in all but the most dangerous approach within this sport is obviously the swoop. And to be honest I have more respect to people taking it easy and learning over the long way than people like me who need to have quick progress ;-)

Anyhow, the best way to go for you is def just jump as many times as possible, learn your canopy and when you feel safe underneath it, continue progressively. Plus, your canopy may not be suitable for swooping, you may wanna look for a canopy that has easy input to front and back risers and that 'dives' properly. Practically you can make any canopy dive into a swoop but you will need a hell-of-alota power in your arms for some of the canopies out there.

Also, take a good look in the fatalities section on dropzone.com, just so you see how many people die taking a wrong approach in attempt to swoop (hard landing deaths). Its very easy to watch all these pros on youtube doing their swoops. Just remember they all have above 2000 jumps and know what they're doing :-) You need only one stupid mistake and a split second to give up your life...

Good luck to you!!

Cheers,
Yako

weird, my recent canopy coach said youd be a complete idiot to land on rear risers alone, and that you should never do it. whats the reason that you would have to do that? if your brakes are fucked you should have chopped your canopy

i havent heard of anything yet but ill ask around the DZ tomorrow. i jump at byron. welcome, you should come out tomorrow~!

i too have a long torso. i bought a rig (which i have up for sale) about a year ago just to get airborne. the guy said it was fine for someone 6'1", which i am, and that was bullshit.

im stoked because it got me back skydiving, and i put probably about 30-40 jumps on it, and it did the job. it hurt my inner thighs after a few jumps in a day, and i couldnt really tighten the legstraps very efficiently. so to answer your question, for function, it absolutely worked, but for comfort, i give it a 3 out of 10 stars. it would be perfect for someone around 5'9 or 5'10, but not for me...........

the good news? i have a custom voodoo curv on order as we speak, BOOOOYAAAAHHHHH BITCHES!

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oh yes I'm quite aware of ski-base...I believe it is a step up though to do WS ski-base

even that has been done though...whats left for the ego to feed on once all of these feats are accomplished? I'm sure somebody will think up even more ego-driven behavior

the people who paved the road for BASE jumping as you and i know it nowadays were called pioneers, not egomaniacs.............

well there may have been some ego involved, who knows, but people who push new limits in my opinion arent always doing it for fame/glory, they are just thinking way ahead outside the box.

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Why is all your grass white?

"This is a hybrid. This is a cross, ah, of Bluegrass, Kentucky Bluegrass, Featherbed Bent, and Northern Columbia Coca. The amazing stuff about this is, that you can play 36 holes on it in the afternoon, take it home and just get stoned to the bejeezus-belt that night on this stuff."

hey ty, you still over there off bryer???

stretch alot and get your floating ribs surgically removed. that way not only will you be flexible but you can go down on yourself anytime you please!!!

where do you get the acid from? i want some

i never really went through the gear fear thing, it just didnt enter my thought process.

however, for some really strange reason, i was scared SHITLESS of the door until jump number 80. i mean really, im going to willingly throw myself out of the plane, but for some reason i just got petrified being near the door, or when i started to approach it from the back of the plane. very weird............then all of a sudden one day i found myself sitting next to it, with my leg outside the plane, staring at the hawaiian ocean, and i realized, HOLY SHIT, im not afraid of the door anymore...............it really happened just all of a sudden.

good luck bro, just keep at it

flystyle is working on something even better and from the rumors i heard its NOT going to be an outrageous price. yes its a vented BASE canopy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idSokAaz0_A

http://www.theflystyle.com

actually i had always wondered how they did that, then i met some CRW dogs at lodi recently. they showed me their setups. the bridle and kill line were both routed through the canopy and directly to the slider, so that when the slider sits down the lines the bridle and PC get sucked in. (i think thats the jist of it.........??.......)

i thought it was super cool

if youre trying to do BASE drills, either pump out a couple of jumps with a BASE canopy packed in your skyrig, and if you dont yet have a BASE canopy, buy a used raven and do the same drills with that..........then move on.

to use a bigass lightly loaded 7-cell for a regular skyrig is going to drive you fucking NUTS. i bought a raven in an old javelin, just to get recurrent skydiving, and literally after about 10 jumps on that thing i sold it because it was frustrating the hell out of me. that and it wouldnt fly straight =)

well at age 24 my parents had to flee the country, and out of NOWHERE they said, CYA.......

so i left and had NO clue how to fend for myself. thats why when i have kids i will definitely make sure that they know the value of a dollar and will teach them that in life you need to work to get what you want and keep a roof over your head. i quickly learned how to support myself and after a few years of having NO money after bills and rent, i got tired of being a line cook and enlisted in the USCG at the young age of 29.......barely got in

been there for 4 years now and im skydiving more than i ever have before =)

i paid 500 for my sabre1 and 20 bux for a pocket...........its in near perfect condition. id say that it was cheap and its good

ive only got 15 wingsuit jumps, but based solely on talking to a SHITLOAD of highly experienced wingsuit pilots at two different local DZ's, i sold my stiletto 150 for a sabre1 150 just for wingsuiting..........
im pretty sure the chances of chopping a stiletto with a bad opening are a hell of alot more than my sabre, and im broke so losing my main = BAD

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Well if I was a parent, I'd yank my kids right the fuck off of facefook and similar sites. Fuck it... Too drunk. This should do: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Tj75Arhq5ho

i was thinking the same thing, that it would be time to remove her completely from what she thinks is the social world, home school her, take her off of all those bullshit media sites, until she gets a little older and realizes that what moronic, clueless young people "think" of her means absolutely nothing.

but then i realized, maybe her parents didnt have a clue what was going on? maybe she kept all these events inside until it was too late. think about it. one minute your daughter is fine, and the next, shes strung out on drugs an alcohol. im sure some parents who saw their kid using substances wouldnt try to "understand' why and would just attack and go apeshit..........

i know my mom did when i was a teenager. she didnt ask questions just went fuckin nuts and threw me in rehab with a bunch of old crackheads and nutjobs when i was a curious 15 yr old trying to have a good time

this is a fucking bummer way to start my sunday. i need to go jump off a power tower. (with a rig)

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Well for now I've dropped the subject. I know she is correct. If there is even a .00001% chance of something terrible happening I shouldn't be doing it, at least not now.

So you're going to quit driving cars too?

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My wife did admit that once the kids are older (high school) then the ramifications of an accident would be less and she would probably feed better about it.

And you're going to put off your dream for 18 years, because of your wife's irrational fear. Wonderful. Turn in your man card. Join the bowling league.

ouch man. did you just slap someone with a bitch citation?

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I'm going to take your post seriously and see where it goes.

You can learn to swoop. It isn't hard and it isn't anything 1,000 jumps won't teach you. Sound like a lot? Well, you can probably cut out about 20 of those jumps with some canopy coaching.

First of all, you have to realize that swooping is 100% about learning to fly the canopy you have to the absolute limits of what that canopy is able to achieve. That doesn't mean yoinking on risers or downsizing too quickly, since that is actually the exact opposite of what an accomplished swooper strives for.

Would you rather be on a Katana 120 and be scary or be on a Sabre2 170 and out swoop the assholes on smaller canopies? Personally I would rather be on the big "slow" canopy and out swoop the others. That shows true skill and understanding. Anyone can go fast on a small canopy, not everyone can swoop the piss out of a bigger canopy. Only a real canopy pilot can do that.

A real canopy pilot understands that the landing pattern is the foundation a swoop is built on. With out accuracy in the pattern, a swoop can not happen consistently. Who wants to be the guy who throws an air-ball sunset pond swoop? Not me, that's for sure! I want to be the guy who goes dirt-water-dirt while tossing a ghostrider blindman.

So you can go get coaching on the canopy you have and be the king of your DZ swoopers or you can downsize too quickly and "walk" with a wheelchair the rest of your life (and have a limp dick because of it). Your choice.

i just took my very first canopy course at chicks rock, not because i thought i should get canopy training, but because i wanted to get my canopy proficiency card........

one day, 4 hop n pops and a day spent with our instructor, and i feel like i have literally been reborn under canopy. EVERYTHING, and i mean EVERYTHING i was doing (except landing and walking away) has been wrong. in my whopping 200ish jumps i was thinking i had it together because lately ive been able to land within a few feet of my target, but with severe and low input on fronts/rears..............

i have been shown a whole new world, and though ive got nothing but time and practice to go (because i suck ass), i had no idea how important the holding, setup, and entering into your downwind/base/final really was at the right altitudes/spots. we were actually shown that you need to swoop, in several stages (at least for our bigger canopies and mild wingloadings) to land efficiently. before this course i really paid no mind to the term "recovery"..... i am unbelievably excited over this new mindframe.

and even though i have a million years of work to do, im actually feeling like im learning how to use my canopy in full flight to stop the vertical altitude loss, plane out, and burn the horizontal before finishing my flare. i cannot WAIT to continue to take canopy courses and do coaching, and i suggest for anyone in the OPs situation or anyone who hasnt actually taken any canopy courses: DO IT!!!!

thanks for your wisdom dave

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With only 150 jumps a 143 reserve is not the smart choice.

Sparky

weird, i dont recall him asking about wingloading or safety advice.........

so good news. i purchased a universal cutaway system (i will take a picture and let you know the brand), at chicks rock this weekend. you simply replace one of the existing screws that holds the chin strap in place with a pin that is spring loaded with a cotter pin that has a cutaway handle on it. it was 25 bux, and the only mod i have to make is to make the existing hole in the helmet slightly bigger with a drill bit...............ill upload pics when i get home and modify it................seems like its gonna work perfect................

im pissed. the concealed cup chin and cutaway kit from bonehead does NOT work with the revolve. i dont understand why they would do this.

im having a bitch of a time with an actual gopro cutaway, so im thinking of fabricating my own cutaway for the actual chin strap thats on the revolve. something with a cotter pin one one side of the existing chinstrap with a small cable routed to it that you could pull and then pull your helmet off if you really needed. this is proving to be quite a little project but im determined to make this happen with my revolve